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Michael Graczyk has covered nearly 500 executions in Texas, but he has never witnessed an inmate survive after lethal-injection drugs were administered. That changed this week in Tennessee, where 50-year-old Christa Pike was still breathing and audibly snoring after two doses of pentobarbital.
Graczyk, 76, told BBC News he was not entirely surprised by the failure, saying the possibility had occurred to him during his decades as a journalist. “It seems to me it was just a matter of time,” he said.
What happened during Pike’s execution attempt?
Tennessee’s protocol provides for a second set of syringes containing pentobarbital if the first dose does not kill the person, according to The Associated Press. It does not specify what should happen if the person remains alive after the second dose.
Pike is in hospital receiving “life-saving care”, her lawyer said. Governor Bill Lee halted executions in Tennessee after Wednesday night’s failed attempt and ordered an independent review of the procedures.
Problems with lethal injections have drawn increased scrutiny over the past decade. A shortage of execution drugs has led some states to change their drug combinations or seek supplies from less established sources; some have also reinstated firing squads as an alternative.
How often do lethal injections go wrong?
The Death Penalty Information Center, which does not take a position on capital punishment, lists 64 botched executions in the United States since 1982. Fifty-one involved lethal injections, and in at least seven cases the execution was halted because officials could not establish an intravenous line.
Graczyk said he had seen needles come out before being reinserted in two cases, but had never seen an execution fail after the drugs were delivered. “That has never happened here,” he said of Texas.
There have been 1,683 executions in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, according to the centre. Texas has carried out 602, more than any other state, and became the first state to use lethal injection in 1982.
Why Graczyk says witnesses matter
Graczyk covered a wide range of subjects during 46 years with The Associated Press, and continued to report on executions after retiring in 2018. He said he considered it important for someone with no stake in a case to witness the state carrying out a death sentence and report what happened.
He said coverage often focuses on the inmate, while victims and their families can be overlooked. Pike’s victim was Colleen Slemmer, a 19-year-old from Florida who was killed after meeting Pike and her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, at a job training camp. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, attended Wednesday’s execution attempt and later described it to NBC News as “a mess”.
Graczyk recalled the 1998 execution of Jonathan Nobles in Texas. Nobles, convicted of the 1986 stabbing murders of Kelley Fraquhar and Mitzi Johnson-Nalley in Austin, sang “Silent Night” as his final words. Graczyk said Nobles stopped singing as the drug took effect, a memory that has stayed with him for nearly 30 years.
